


Change is Good

by devilsnowcandy



Category: Journey into Mystery, Thor (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ficlet, Gen, Identity Issues, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilsnowcandy/pseuds/devilsnowcandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Spoilers to the end of Journey Into Mystery 645)  What if Loki didn't manage to send her away before the end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change is Good

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a request submitted to my tumblr askbox.

It’s been years since they left Asgardia, but they are both still children. Gods and their like age differently from humans.

They stay under superheroes’ radar. Not because they’re not doing anything supervillainy, but because Loki finds he no longer feels the need to be lauded for his efforts. Leah thinks he’s clever enough, he can tell, even though she’s hardly the kind to say so. And anyway, it would be a shame to ruin his other self’s somewhat better name.

He’s not sure what he’ll do with her in the end. She seemed to accept him as Loki readily enough – well, she only knew his younger self for barely a day in actuality, after all – and even when he told her they were running away that night, and that she should probably not try to contact Hela, she didn’t seem to mind.

She’s never asked him how the Fear Crown was destroyed and Mephisto deposed.

Tonight they’re going out for milkshakes. Her suggestion – “for the nostalgia?” he’d asked, and she’d scowled but not disagreed.

As they sip on their beverages – disgusting things really, he thinks, far too sweet for his tastes – the shop radio switches to a news segment about their newest crime. He turns a little to the radio, smiling around his straw. Yes, yes, no suspects. Superhero community at a loss. Menace to the public, anonymously causing chaos.

Leah watches him, frowning. 

“This drink is disgusting,” she says suddenly, interrupting the report, and he looks at her, surprised.

Abruptly she stands and takes his arm. They leave the shop without finishing the milkshakes. He lets her drag him down the road, back to the hotel they’ve been staying at for the past month, because that’s what the Loki she knew, or thought she knew, would have done.

Perhaps tomorrow he will find himself tired of playing this charade, of occasionally having his plots work out for the benefits of others so that she will stay with him. Perhaps he will find some ridiculously simple and horrifically gory way to dispose of her, get himself on national television and let the whole world know that he’s back, well and truly. Loki, the real thing.

Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps they can continue on this way, with him pretending to be her Loki and she pretending to be his Leah.

 _Change is all I wanted,_ he told his younger self. And it’s true, though he knows he can never really be good. 

After all, Loki never really had a friend before.


End file.
